Emma Frost
by RubyBelle
Summary: The trick, Emma knows, is to ignore.
1. Put Simply

**disclaimer! **Emma's too badass to have been given so little screentime, if I had control over these copyrights I'd straight-up make her be wielding flamethrowers and shit.

This is my way of doing character studies. Except it got out of hand and now this is three chapters long, slowly becoming more and more Shaw/Emma-based.

**Emma Frost**

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><p>To put things simply, to Emma, everything was boring.<p>

To know everyone else's thoughts, all the time, to know what they were planning, feeling, whether they were waxing poetic or just feeling ornery, their fears and expectations, excitement, worries, joys, to know all of that, it was like being able to almost read the future.

And, to Emma, the future was boring.

xxx

When she was a kid, her power first manifested. She can't pinpoint an exact date, but when she started meeting new children in school, her head started buzzing and buzzing, and it took her the better part of a year to understand that only a mere fraction of the words, images, thoughts in her head were hers.

Even longer it took for her to understand projection, and when not to use it. Four crying classmates and a hysterical teacher were her final signifiers.

Her parents took notice early, but had no idea what to do. With practice, Emma understood the concept of erasing memories, making walls, blocking thoughts and forcing ideas. She was weak with no practice, but her parents were ideal, and they soon barely remembered their daughter, Emma Frost.

High school was hell, but only because of the horny teenagers. It was easy enough to pass classes when your teachers thought the answer as they asked the question.

And then the free world.

xxx

Emma's hardest task, honestly, was separating herself from the others. Which thoughts were hers, which did she hear? When she finally mastered the ability to _ignore_, oh, what blessed silence that brought!

Ignorance became her number one weapon, ignoring others, ignoring their thoughts, all the time, ignoring what they were planning, feeling, disregarding whether they were waxing poetic or just feeling ornery, their fears and expectations, excitement, worries, joys, pushing it all out her mind was true bliss.

xxx

And there it was. Shaw was nice enough, a rat bastard, but filled with charm and willing to watch others as they tried to play along. Who knows how old he actually was, Emma never asked, never looked, just accepted, and he took her hand in his and promised a life of perfection.

He didn't ask for much, in light of what he would give, and he was always so overbearingly affectionate, notwithstanding his multiple, tedious requests. It wasn't really something he asked for, Emma admits, her being in a constant state of undress, but she knew to keep him happy, and he had some other people on his side, so her best bet to be number one would to be on the top of his late-night list.

Ignoring their thoughts, feelings, Emma can still hear them, and half the time, they aren't very nice. Azazeal cared little to none—she wondered sometimes how far into his mind she could get without him knowing, because she knew so _little_ and that actually bothered her—but Riptide had a little pond of barely controlled rage in him, which everyone ignored.

The trick, Emma knows, is to ignore. Shaw knew also, but he was less proactive, a little less willing to get on your bad side.

xxx

Emma, so bored with life, so exhausted with expected outcomes, it's a surprise, happy and relieving, when Little Erik Lensherr—Magneto, he demands, and she goes along with it, because what does she care—appears and asks her to tag along.

"He left quite a bit of a gap in my life, if I'm to admit."

A fill, then, is she. Emma doesn't mind, Shaw just used her because she didn't mind skirts and invading other people's most private thoughts, so something like just a decoy, just a filler, a scanner, really, for Magneto, that wasn't much of a stretch, was it.

Except, she notices, some flitter of emotion—that was _actually hers_, so rare this happened—rattling in her belly, Magneto can't even bare to take her hand, so very unlike Shaw, with his dastardly good looks and smiles, and she takes the blue girl's hand and Azazeal's and they disappear to some other place, a hideout Emma already knows the location to, because Magneto is good at hiding with that helmet, but his undoing will be the blue girl, so lost and confused.

xxx

Alas, Emma sighs, Magneto is only interesting with that helmet off, but she finds his emotions—turmoil, pain, agony, guilt, _I'm sorry I'm sorry I have to keep running going but I'm sorry_, she got it already—so exaggerated, so comical, that it's all she can do, just reading him. He can feel her, too, and she knows it's from practice, too used to that other telepath, and he always recoils, but Emma moves on and reads everyone else, because knowing the future is boring, but not knowing it is just too much for her to bear.


	2. There It Was

This chapter gets a little citrusy.

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><p>Emma never meant to take his words further than solely face value. She was too used to it, to this, to people lying and conning her, she sometimes wonders how difficult life must be for the people who <em>didn't<em> automatically know someone's true intentions. She saw him for the first time, and he was just so overwhelmingly charismatic, just filled with plans of him-and-her, king-and-queen, Emma believed him for a moment before she reminded herself with a thought and a phrase taken straight from his mind—"Us mutants."

Who _cares_ if mutants won the war, who _cares_ if people begin to fear us. Emma learned to block them out, she learned to make them forget, what use did she have for a system that made it wrong to hate them. But Shaw, all smiles and good looks, he tells her she'll never be alone again, Emma is reminded of her brother, and she subdues herself for his greater good.

xxx

Despite your personal beliefs, before Emma met Shaw, she _did_ wear clothes. It was an offhand comment he made, something Emma could feel from their connection—she was only half sure he knew when she was in there, she never actually _asked_—meant more than he tried to make it seem, that maybe she would look prettier in skirts? As the months went by, he asked for, technically, less, and then one night she finds herself in bed with him, and it's utter confusion and complete satisfaction.

xxx

Being a telepath, she has a good enough grip on her own mind; she can understand her thoughts, grab hold of them, basically understand herself better than others. So a thought or a feeling to take her by surprise is almost nonexistent, she thinks things through, convinces herself and reassures herself, tells herself that, no, Shaw does not mean more than what he says.

She was expecting it to happen, sometime, someday, when it was late enough or he was lonely enough or it was quiet enough, she expected him to make a move that didn't end at amiable, that had some more carnal motives, and she had expected that she would respond in kind, a sort of compliancy that was needed, but she never expected that she would _want_ it.

Afterwards, her mind found the connection, hidden somewhere deeper in her, in the place she had shoved her emotions to long ago, but at the time, all she knew was he wanted sex and she wanted him.

(The other word is just painful to say, Emma couldn't forget it, but, Gods, how she wanted to.)

xxx

He was smiling, like always, his strong jaw and sharp cheekbones, his whiskey cup emptied for the eight time. She was tired of getting him ice, she had nothing much to drink, but scantily-clad as always, and they're talking about something inconsequential, this or that or another, and his hand finds his way to her knee. She sees it, ignores it, figures he waited long enough, and keeps talking, flips her hair some, invite him in, and his hands slides further up, warm and calloused, rugged.

He's done talking suddenly, and his lips find their way to hers, and she's done talking too, but she tries to keep herself from kissing him back because the urge—where was _that_ hiding all along—is so strong, and she doesn't like looking desperate.

Her mind touches his, so slightly, touches ground, and the connection explodes, with all of these things Emma had been hiding, all of these things Shaw apparently can't keep down, and who knows where that cup went, but they're so close, so close. She breaks a nail unbuttoning his pants, but he's too much of a gentlemen, he kisses her hand, coos something into her ear, and he's inside, and Emma is on fire, boiling, she doesn't even know which thoughts are hers, and she's having enough of time trying to avoid accidental projection.

He's breathing—_he's_—hard, heavy, thick, the ceiling is this bright white and his shirt is dark, he smells like cologne, expensive and flirtatious, Emma's pretty sure she breaks another nail and then it's all over and he's romantic enough to suggest continuing on the bed.

What Shaw is not, however, is patient, because he just makes her take him up on his offer, and the next thing Emma remembers is it being four hours later, with a rising sun and an impending sense of distress.

xxx

(When she notices his death, sure, it's painful, Emma feels like she's being stabbed, ripped apart, but she knows better, and moves along. Being a telepath, she knows herself too well, and she leaves those emotions, so pesky, back in the corner of her mind, blocks them, and then moves along, she always moves along.)


	3. Diamond

And this one is overbearingly romantic, albeit tiny. Thanks for stickin' in, there.

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><p>She'd felt it from him only once, and Emma was never used to joy, but that was honestly all that she could feel when she understood the overwhelming, incomprehensible, absolute adoration she felt in his mind.<p>

He seemed annoyed, he cut her off with that damn helmet, and his tone of voice was so painfully detached, brusque, and he tells her to stay out of his head, and leaves. The hotel was expensive, luxurious, there was endless rooms, Emma had grown up with just enough money given for her to use, this sort of environment was abnormal and uncomfortable for her, and Shaw disappears in the fabric of money this place is composed of, and Emma is alone and she _can't stop thinking_.

It was dark, destroyed, but that was the world, ashes to ashes, he saw her as a sparkling gem, something perfect when surrounded by destruction, and it was his hands, calloused and rough, putting the tiara on her head, and he was breathless because _she_ was _his_, he promised before, he didn't lie, king-and-queen, she would be his queen and she would rule perfectly by his side, all he wanted, it was her, always her.

She feels something wet on her face, and she wipes away her tears—they feel so _bizarre_. She wants him back again, just here, because she wants to tell him, _me, too_, but nothing ever works out the way Emma would like it to, and he stays gone.

xxx

The day she has to leave for Russia—he decided so late in the night, her head ached too much to complain—he's warm again. Charming, insufferable, Shaw. He holds her hand, and he's so affectionate, so kind, he apologizes, like nothing mattered and he was just overreacting. Emma can't decide if she's happy or sad, but she took his hand anyway and kisses him, for the first time, even though they both seemed to want it, and it was just as if it was all a matter of impossible time.

She feels something pressing in her mind, a worry, she's not used to them, but something is screeching, _time is running out running out running out_, and she pays no mind because Shaw kisses her back and the clock says there's four hours before she has to meet the General, and it's enough time, not enough, but enough.

xxx

(She gets kidnapped, then, and they aren't smart enough to block her powers, as if they'd ever know, but she can _feel_ the cusp of his mind, too far away, too close, and when she reaches out, she's almost crying for him, she never thought she could, he just steps away and she wiping away the tears again, so out of place.)

xxx

When she searches his old haunting places, all the rooms he had her and all the rooms she never knew, his last bed, hidden deep in Russia, Magneto is only dropping by for whatever, she finds a box under a pillow and has to cut herself out of her own mind, because the diamond is just the right size for her ring finger.


End file.
